Whatever transpired, the FBI agents found no indication that it constituted a crime or a threat to national security. They confirmed this when they interviewed Broadwell and then Petraeus. They are both said to have been forthcoming and consistent, even telling the agents more than they already knew.

Petraeus seems to have been the first guy in memory not to lie about sex. And a good thing too, because lying to a federal agent is a crime….

And just because Broadwell performed the literary equivalent of sex under a desk does not mean that any actual sex is anybody’s business.

By the long-honored principle of minimization, the members of Congress who are demanding to know why they were not told earlier about Petraeus’s affair with his biographer should be asking another question.

They should instead be demanding to know why anybody outside the FBI was told anything at all.